SAAF pilots

The SA Air Force says the availability of pilots is cyclical. It can therefore not always ensure that there are sufficient pilots, it told Erika Gibson, military correspondent for the Afrikaans Gauteng daily, Beeld. The best it can do is to be prepared to meet shoratges and to recover from them in such a way as to prevent permanent damage to the organisation's capabilities. With this in mind, the SAAF was taking all the necessary steps to ensure that its current and future pilot pool was deep enough to provide flight crews for the new fighter aircraft and helicopters currently on order.

Brig Gen Hugh Payne, the SAAF's director helicopters systems, told the paper the Agusta A109s would probably be based at Louis Trichardt, Bloemfontein, Pretoria and Cape Town. Other helicopter squadrons would continue flying the Denel Aviation Oryx (Eurocopter Cougar) and the Eurocopter BK-117. Payne said the SAAF was presently training 16 new helicopter pilots a year, which met requirements. Three pilots, a test pilot and four technicians were currently in Italy as part of the project team supervising the construction of the first five of the rotorcraft. The other 25 are to be built by Denel near Johannesburg.

Colonel Frans Vermaak of the directorate combat systems told Beeld preparations to receive the BAE systems Hawk and the Gripen International JAS39 Gripen. The SAAF presently has fighter pilots in Britain and Sweden as part of the respective project teams. BAE Systems, like Agusta will also help with the training of pilots, while the SAAF's remaining fighter pilots were being improved to the instructor level. Vermaak said the SAAF was already part of the Hawk users group which met one a year. The flying service also had an agreement in place within the UK RAF to train one pilot a year as part of its Hawk training programme.

Defence Systems Daily